City of Hattiesburg receives $240,000 grant for safe roads
HATTIESBURG, Miss. (WDAM) - The City of Hattiesburg is one of three Mississippi communities to receive funding through the new Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant program.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced the recipients of the SS4A grants on Wednesday, Feb. 1 - totaling $800 million in awards. Hattiesburg received $240,000, with a $60,000 local match.
Samantha McCain, chief communications officer for the city, said Hattiesburg officials plan to use the funding to write a comprehensive safety action plan to address motor vehicle fatalities. The plan will include data on where fatal accidents occur and how to reduce their occurrence. This information will help guide future road improvement projects and funding applications.
“The ultimate goal is to make Hattiesburg roads safer and reduce future traffic accidents and fatalities,” said McCain. “This is the first step in doing that.”
The SS4A competitive grant program was established by President Joe Biden’s 2022 infrastructure law, which provided $5 billion over five years for regional, local and Tribal initiatives to prevent deaths and serious injuries on the nation’s roadways. It also allowed the U.S. Department of Transportation to launch a data visualization tool that shows crash hotspots to help target needed resources.
Buttigieg said this investment is critical as traffic fatalities reached a 16-year high in 2021. Additionally, a recent National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study estimated the economic impact of these crashes at $340 billion in 2019 alone.
“Every year, crashes cost tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars to our economy; we face a national emergency on our roadways, and it demands urgent action,” said Buttigieg. “We are proud that these grants will directly support hundreds of communities as they prepare steps that are proven to make roadways safer and save lives.”
He added that the SS4AA program supports the National Roadway Safety Strategy - a comprehensive approach launched in January 2022 to make the nation’s roadways safer for everyone - and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s vision of zero roadway deaths.
The Hattiesburg project is classified as an action plan grant. These grants assist communities that do not currently have a roadway safety plan in place to reduce roadway fatalities, laying the groundwork for a comprehensive set of actions.
The City of Starkville and the Central Mississippi Planning and Development District, Inc. also received action planning grants.
The complete list of awards can be viewed HERE. The next funding opportunity of $1.1 billion is expected to be released in April of this year.
In addition to SS4A grants, the Federal Highways Administration will award a total of $21 million to 70 Tribes to improve road safety on Tribal lands on Thursday, Feb. 2.
For more information about SS4A, including additional resources and information for interested applicants and stakeholders, click HERE.
To read more about the Department’s National Roadway Safety Strategy, including the Safe Systems Approach, click HERE.
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